Abstract
The Australian contribution to the First World War has so often been taken out of context and exaggerated to imply that Australian soldiers were innate war-winners, or that they were hapless victims of their incompetent British generals. This chapter examines the practical nature of Australia’s participation in and contribution to the operational conduct of the war on the Western Front in 1918. It argues that the Australian infantry’s successes in the latter stages of the war stemmed from its growing proficiency in the use of complicated combinations of weaponry developed by the British as a way to break the deadlock in Europe. In situating the Australian military contributions within the wider context of the conduct of the war—particularly by that of the British Army—we can see just how the AIF made a significant and lasting contribution to the war on the Western Front.
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Notes
- 1.
Ernest Scott, Australia During the War, vol. 11, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–18 (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1936), 872.
- 2.
Different kinds of barrages laid down a curtain of shells or bullets between the infantry and the enemy, or over enemy positions, to form a barrage in the true sense of the word, a barrier or a dam.
- 3.
Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham, Fire-Power: British Army Weapons and Theories of War (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1985), 51; Brig.-Gen. J.E. Edmonds, Sir Douglas Haig’s Command to the 1st July: Battle of the Somme, vol. 1, Military Operations: France and Flanders, 1916 (London: Macmillan, 1932), 282.
- 4.
Peter Doyle and Matthew Bennett, “Military Geography: Terrain Evaluation and the British Western Front 1914–1918,” Geographical Journal 163, no. 1 (1997): 3.
- 5.
Lt.-Col. C.N.F. Broad, “The Development of Artillery Tactics 1914–18,” Journal of the Royal Artillery 49 (1922–23): 67.
- 6.
Lt.-Col. A.F. Brooke, “The Evolution of Artillery in the Great War,” pt. 2, Journal of the Royal Artillery 51 (1924–25): 364.
- 7.
Major A.F. Becke, “The Coming of the Creeping Barrage,” Journal of the Royal Artillery 58 (1931–32): 21.
- 8.
General Headquarters Artillery Circular No. 4, AWM27, 310/41, Australian War Memorial, Canberra (hereafter cited as AWM).
- 9.
Major H.S.L. Winterbotham, “British Survey on the Western Front,” Geographical Journal 53, no. 4 (1919): 254–6.
- 10.
Sir Lawrence Bragg, Maj.-Gen. A.H. Dowson and Lt.-Col. H.H. Hemming, Artillery Survey in the Great War (London, Field Survey Association, 1971), 9.
- 11.
Major H.S.L. Winterbotham, “Geographical Work with the Army in France,” Geographical Journal 54, no.1 (1919): 17; Winterbotham, “British Survey,” 270.
- 12.
Winterbotham, “Geographical Work,” 20.
- 13.
John G. Jenkin, William and Lawrence Bragg, Father and Son: The Most Extraordinary Collaboration in Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 369.
- 14.
Bragg, Dowson and Hemming, Artillery Survey, 29.
- 15.
Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army’s Art of Attack, 1916–18 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 125.
- 16.
Ibid., 113.
- 17.
Ibid., 114.
- 18.
Amendment to SS197—The Tactical Employment of Lewis Guns, May 1918, AWM27, 310/98, AWM.
- 19.
Maj. R.M. Wright, “Machine gun Tactics and Organisation,” Army Quarterly 1 (1920): 306.
- 20.
Major N. Hudson, “Trench Mortars in the Great War,” Journal of the Royal Artillery 42 (1920): 30.
- 21.
Douglas Orgill, The Tank: Studies in the Development and Use of a Weapon (London: Heinemann, 1970), 13–14.
- 22.
Brev.-Col. J.F.C. Fuller, Tanks in the Great War 1914–1918 (London: John Murray, 1920), 37.
- 23.
Chris Ellis and Peter Chamberlain, “Tanks Mark I to V,” (Windsor: Profile Pub., 1972), 23.
- 24.
Hughes, Monstrous Anger of the Guns, 133–5.
- 25.
Jay Winter and Antoine Prost, The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 75.
- 26.
Fourth Australian Divisional Artillery General Report, 8 July 1918, AWM4, 13/13/26, Appendix 1, AWM.
- 27.
John Terraine, “Monash: Australian Commander,” History Today 16, no. 1 (1966): 19–20.
- 28.
P.A. Pedersen, Monash as Military Commander (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1985), 226.
- 29.
Lt.-Gen. Sir John Monash, The Australian Victories in France in 1918 (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1920), 51.
- 30.
C.E.W. Bean, The Australian Imperial Force in France during the Allied Offensive, 1918, vol. 6, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1942), 530.
- 31.
S.F. Wise, “The Black Day of the German Army: Australian and Canadians at Amiens, August 1918,” in 1918: Defining Victory: Chief of Army History Conference 1998, eds. Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (Canberra: Army History Unit, Department of Defence, 1999), 1.
- 32.
Ludendorff Memoirs quoted in Lt.-Gen. Sir John Monash, The Australian Victories in France in 1918 (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1920), 130–1.
- 33.
J.P. Harris, “The Rise of Armour,” in British Fighting Methods in the Great War, ed. Paddy Griffith (London: F. Cass, 1996), 132.
- 34.
John Terraine, To Win a War: 1918, The Year of Victory (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1978), 141.
- 35.
Ibid., p.162.
- 36.
Report on the St Quentin Canal, undated, 3DRL/2316, 63 of 72, AWM.
- 37.
Fourth Army, Weekly Appreciation for period from September 21st to 27th (inclusive), 28 September 1918, AWM4, 1/14/11 pt.3, AWM.
- 38.
Terraine, To Win a War, 163.
- 39.
Monash, Australian Victories in France, 56.
- 40.
R.A. Beaumont, “Hamel, 1918: A Study in Military-Political Interaction,” Military Affairs 31, no.1 (1967): 12.
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Hampton, M. (2017). The Key to Victory: Australia’s Military Contribution on the Western Front in 1918. In: Ariotti, K., Bennett, J. (eds) Australians and the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51520-5_3
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